dǝʇoɥʇɐlǝɓuıɹɔ

/̶̛͎/̴̝́/̸̡̯̅d̸̙̙̎͝ị̴̕͝s̴̳̓̅r̵͉͘e̶̗̽g̵̩͚̎ă̴͕̖r̸͙̊d̷̪͑͜ ̶̛͓̗̄t̸̨̫͛̅ḩ̵̐̕i̶̗̰͋̕š̵̳̀ ̵͙̓̅t̵̓͘ͅr̵̪̥̀̀a̸͓͚̿̂n̸̜̝͑ś̴̻̬̕m̸̧̝͆͆į̶͎̓͋s̵͍͙̏s̵͍̀̿i̷͉̚͝ǫ̸͓͐́ǹ̶̯̑/̵̤͘/̷̛̥̞͒/̵͙̭̒̎

[thecringelathotep]

never thought i would write fanfics or make a tumblr account again but here we are

and here are you

welcome to whatever the hell this is be not afraid of how weird it is there is a method to the madness

allow me to share the story of why this page exists

i have a personal philosophy around writing and a mild interest in experimental writing styles can you recognize the pretentiously exaggerated wannabe cormac mccarthism i am playing around with here

anyway i have an immense and persistent interest in storytelling in all its forms so i consume storytelling and experiment around with ideas in my mind not every idea deserves to be made manifest but all deserve at least some consideration and exploration until they exhaust themselves or else my interest dwindles and then they are cast aside

the more pernicious ideas get turned into drafts and notes for example i had once conceived an original concept that i planned out in great detail for a total of four books as a series inspired entirely to challenge someones claim that lovecraftian cosmic horror cannot work in any setting other than the first half of the twentieth century so i came up with a lovecraftian cyberpunk setting focused on dream technology that entirely supplanted the internet and how in the world of a cold war between megacorporations and authoritarian regimes an unseen threat is brewing to use this technology to allow entities beyond human comprehension to invade our world

i had not done anything with this concept after having written all the details for this world the dream technology the general overarching plot and the entire detailed plot of the first book simply because i did not feel the drive to actually write it beyond the concept stage

but sometimes inspiration strikes and that is a force far more powerful than even the most pernicious of ideas because when i catch an inspiration high i do not come up with just a concept sometimes it is not even the concept that comes first but a scene and it unfurls in the theater of my minds eye in great detail down to the exact lines that the characters are saying and from that one scene the rest of the story grows

inspiration becomes the driving force behind new ideas and in rare cases i am caught in the perfect storm or cascading effect where inspiration drives ideas that clear space for the inspiration to grow

lightning in a bottle

you never know when inspiration may strike or where it may come from or even why so i do not deny myself many potential sources of it i will often watch and read stuff i do not like or agree with because i know that even in my criticism thereof ideas and inspiration may lurk and this does not apply to only creative writing

still inspiration is more commonly found in things one likes

i like the amazing digital circus for example and my reasons for liking it are likely all the same ones most anyone else may have so no point in exploring this this is just the preamble of how we got here browsing pinterest for tadc relevant images i had come across some original takes on jax which struck me as interesting but inspiration snuck up on me because of a particular song i was listening to at that exact moment and the lyrics for the song hit me in tandem with this design to open the floodgates for a rare and powerful inspiration high i ended up unwittingly forming one of those detailed scenes that began to play themselves out in my mind down to the precise lines of dialogue and the more i kept thinking and exploring this scene the more it begged questions of why and how it would come to be in the first place

inspiration generating ideas ideas paving way to allow the inspiration to grow

the art in question was a jax design by @kalpeavaris for their tadc au a souls worth and the song was heretic by frayle

this was one of those perfect storm moments because after being hit with that first scene i found myself soon enough struck with another inspiration bolt for another scene likewise playing itself out in perfect detail though this one came about while listening to summertime sadness by frayle

ideas started forming to explain and connect these scenes and they generated several other key scenes and more connective tissue started forming until i had the skeleton for my very own au for the amazing digital circus

truth be told i never wrote fanfics as i never had an inspiration high like this which explored an existing story for i typically get inspirations to do something original closest i have come to this before was my own homebrew concept for an alternative to the horus heresy in the warhammer fourty thousand setting

but that is hardly original it is a fan favorite idea to explore and has been done several times although i will say that my idea does appear to be completely original because i did not merely want to rewrite the original narrative but instead explored it as a character study of the primarchs who are all deeply fascinating namely i wanted to fully switch which of them remained loyal and which turned traitor and explore how that could even happen in the first place with as little alteration to their existing character as possible and i had come pretty far along in detailing it and reimagining several of the key events in the heresy with these alterations

but i likewise did not find the drive to write it out in full and frankly it would be a herculean task to undertake considering that the horus heresy spans some sixty plus books i could have written out just the events i reimagined i suppose but that did not happen

original prose is more my speed such as the lovecraftian cyberpunk idea i mentioned above however writing a four book series without the drive for it just would not work

a more recent idea that i developed came from listening to the stairs in the woods creepypasta that was read on an episode of creepcast now that idea i most likely will end up writing so i put it into my active projects list as i too had developed the bare bones for it all that is missing is figuring out a precise timeline and after that i can get down to writing it the basic concept i want to explore there is how a culture and its own unique folklore and horrors can be a living entity that exists in a certain symbiosis with the natives but may treat foreigners worse though it would also depend on how respectful one is of that culture and its ways regardless if they are native or foreign if i do end up writing it i will post it to the creepcast reddit and will be extremely happy if isaiah and hunter read it on the show and crack some jokes about it regardless if they end up liking or hating it

anyway who else is excited for tadc episode eight i am rarely so hooked on a show to where i actually cant wait for the next episode to see what happens and i was perfectly fine waiting for new tadc episodes before my interest in the show grew steadily with each successive episode but that cliffhanger sure did a number on me as it was one of the reasons i was exploring pinterest for tadc related material while considering the potential developments of the upcoming episode i ended up reading some tadc fanfics to scratch the anticipation itch but also because i was already actively exploring my tadc au and wanted to hunt down some more direct sources of inspiration that could contribute something more to the ongoing cascading effect

that is how i came across the uncertainty of feelings by @hopalynes-art and do you know what happened instead of gaining more insight into my au i ended up getting an entirely separate inspiration high for a specific scene that takes place in their fanfic i had hit two consecutive inspiration highs

lightning should not strike twice in the same spot but it just might if you are a fool that actively chases after it

once again i had an entire scene perfectly playing out before my eyes and ideas streamed forth to explain how this scene could come about what is one to do when the muses curse them so well i decided to be pragmatic about it and switched focus on this fresh inspiration high which I knew was a quick one shot affair and not a whole au that will span at least two arcs

i wrote it polished it and figured that since i finally have something that is complete i might as well put it out into the world and so i made an ao3 account you can find it there under the title sharing the spotlight though you should read the original fanfic it is based on first it is a ribbun story subsequently i decided to also contact hopalynes and give them the right to read it first as a matter of good author etiquette

which is why i made this tumblr account

there is certainly at least something a little funny about this

they liked it by the way for which i am very glad

but since i am already here i might as well settle in and make something of this account so i have set up shop and chose a particular stylistic direction with how i will be operating on here

bear witness

will there be anything of interest to read here

depens on my progress with the tadc au as i am of two minds about how to approach it as i wrote above i will explore an idea as far as it takes me and i will exhaust an inspiration high to its fullest however if i at some point lose my drive i may abandon the project entirely

because there are other things i have going on

were that to happen i would not want to leave people hanging with an abandoned and unfinished story which is why i do not favor publishing it as i write it but would prefer to write it out in full first and then begin posting it online after it is all done and polished

but perhaps there are merits to posting it as i write it however i am still considering if they would outweigh the annoyance of having an unfinished work on display

there is also that creepypasta to consider so perhaps i will post about that whenever i get around to it

or else some errant thoughts about writing and inspirations and such

feel free to ask me questions about anything i mentioned herein i suppose i might even answer them

if nothing else this account will just be left standing as an odd obelisk of weirdness that made itself known and embraced the silence that followed

enjoy

or do not

[thecringelathotep]

i have finished writing my tadc finale review mixed with show retrospective mixed with jax character analysis and refutation of jax hate and general commentary on storytelling authorial intent and audience reception

and it is somewhere around

twenty three thousand three hundred twenty eight

words long

will release as promised after the finale has finished airing on youtube i need to grab a couple of screenshots from it anyway

now i can get back to work on my wip tadc au

wonder if anyone will bother reading it once they see how long it is

[thecringelathotep]

lore drop two for jaxs playground tadc au

jaxs playground tadc au masterpost

so the above imagine is another example of the sort of puzzle game i will be doing for my au while i am hard at work on it

and i had a few more productive days with it as i further developed some chapters and fleshed out the details for the epilogue

and the most important development is that i am now officially expanding the story into three acts although the third act will not be what is typical for a story i will admit but for the purposes of what i am trying to do i refuse to just glance over things in a chapter or two and as i realize that i will need several chapters for this purpose they can no longer be grouped together with act two

act three will surely not be as long as the first two acts and the main conflict of the story will be resolved by the end of act two but it just has to be this way

i had written out the plan for the first chapter in act three and i am extremely happy with it and its role in the story

i have also come up with a certain convention in having each act titled after an existing piece of literature and accompanied with a quote from said piece of literature that will be pertinent to the overall character of each act how these titles and quotes apply are somewhat interpretive on my behalf and as a result their meaning might become apparent only retrospectively after having read each act if not the entirety of the story

i also chose a quote for the major theme of the entire story from yet another piece of literature

apologies for being so vague

with all of that said i have to say that for the last two days i had actually switched my attention to rewriting my tadc finale review and it kind of ran away from me as i kept expanding it and it is now partially a finale review and largely becoming an analysis of jaxs character to address some of the criticisms for his character

i felt this unavoidable because of how important jax is to the entire story and to my central complaint about the finale

i am starting to wonder if i should maybe separate all of that from the finale review into a separate post but on the other hand it feels best to keep it all together because it is not irrelevant

but the text is already massive and i am maybe potentially approaching the start of writing the last two parts of it

i will try to release almost immediately after episode nine has finished airing on youtube i will need to grab a couple of screenshots from it anyway

next lore drop post for my au will happen in just a bit under two weeks so the review will be a nice midway entry on my blog between now and then

a much shorter ramble for once thank you for reading

[thecringelathotep]

notes on the notes for my notes

lore drop one for jaxs playground tadc au this is probably lying around in some abandoned building somewhere

but make no mistake this is not canon to tadc this is canon to my au

jaxs playground tadc au masterpost

i had intensely productive several days of working on the au story structure only to then hit a massive roadblock once i got to one of the two major chapters

in fact the events of this chapter were the genesis behind this au which is to say the general outline of events came to me in an unprompted bout of inspiration from which this entire au was developed

such wonderful irony that it would give me so much trouble for about four days before i finally managed to work it out AND it ended up generating an idea for an extra chapter

anyway more of my ramblings on the creative process for this au and my idea for how to promote it along the way with lore drop materials like the C&A business card above

the roadblock as annoying in that i knew literally everything i wanted to do on the other side of it but i could not quite build the bridge there

ended up rewriting it a few times and being unhappy with every iteration but i kept each iteration instead of deleting them and just set them aside as notes on the same page when i finally figured out the missing piece to make it all flow together i ended up using those scraps after all so it was worth writing them just as much as it was worth keeping them

speaking of note taking at this point i have several different formats of notes and my advice for everyone writing is to always write down any idea that comes to mind immediately

i have the various notes in different formats on my pc i have a notebook full of hand written notes it also contains random pieces of paper i wrote notes on when the handbook was out of reach and i have even used my messaging apps as impromptu note apps because they were the first thing open on my phone when i wanted to write a note down i did later just copy it over to my written notes

you can always systematize all your notes in a single source later i eventually do this as well because i need a single location for all of them to keep track of which ones i have added somewhere in the story structure already or not once they are added to the story structure i delete them from the unified source

speaking of note formats i mentioned in one of my previous wip update posts how i kept creating different structures for my notes i have a visual timeline where the events for different characters are visibly compared but i also just have a full chronological list of events overall and a list of events only for a specific period of time that is defined by something in particular so if i want to quickly find the events for that something i know that i can find that more easily in that separate box

and more importantly i realized that it is fine to leave things a mess at times

namely at one stage i thought i should create a separate section for notes on character interactions and how their particular relationships work i only made a little bit of progress with it but then moved onto other things and not come back to it and i doubt that i will come back to it as it seems unnecessary now

but who knows i may choose to return to this idea at some point it may become useful later for other purposes even writing what little i did for those notes gave me ideas

i keep comparing my loreboard and note taking to a conspiracy board and schizo ramblings but uh

if the shoe fits and more importantly IF IT WORKS

then it works and i am staying the course

now about the promotional materials

i have spent an extensive amount of time and effort on figuring out my original take for the full backstory of events to tadc canon working carefully around the canon to fit with it rather than reinterpret it from the ground up

however the irony is that much of that background info will not have any direct function in the story proper or else be sprinkled around sparsely the heavier revelations would obviously happen closer to the end of the story but even then i cannot yet say how much of it i would end up including

it was mostly for my own reference to help me create a solid basis to work from and not end up running into plotholes or contradictions

however i do selfishly want to show off just how far i thought things through so if i cannot do that in the story why not do it like a puzzle instead and create various materials that when put together will reveal much of the hidden history behind my au interpretation of tadc canon

yeah

lets do that

if this was too confusing i hope it will become more clear once i drop a few more of these in the future and the next one is literally just a week away

anyway thank you for bothering to read all this rambling to the end

[thecringelathotep]

story structure under construction

the loreboard just keeps growing it is an insatiable monster

jaxs playground tadc au masterpost

last time i mentioned working on the psychological profiles for the characters and that process led to a happy accident that i started noticing

i had unintentionally started creating meaningful thematic parallels between the different characters and in their dynamics between each other and this immediately necessitated creating additional boxes on the loreboard where i worked out the key dynamics between some of the characters

this is longer post so let me just

there we go anyway as i was saying

that in turn made me think that i would likely benefit from creating a rules sheet for character interactions but with at least nine characters to work with that creates a long list of combinations on which i did work for a little bit but after hitting a wall i pivoted to the next thing

which was finally starting the initial work on the story structure up to this point i had ideas for specific scenes and moments and their placement in the story in relation to the major and key events but not necessarily where they appear in relation to each other beyond that so that was the next task especially since i kept coming up with more ideas that would be the connective tissue between the major events and needed to start figuring out how and when to reveal certain information to the reader

as it stands right now the story structure is as follows

prologue in three parts

act one with fourteen chapters so far

act two with sixteen chapters so far

epilogue in three parts

some of the notes in the structure just layout all events in that chapter and in some it is more general notes because i have not yet figured out the full course of events that is more so the case for chapters in act one because act two is where the conflict really gets going so i have a better idea for the progression of events whereas act one introduces the world and characters and sets up events in act two

there are also so many hand written notes that i have not yet placed anywhere on the board or in the associated files and the sheer volume and how spread out everything is has presented a new challenge in that once i started working on the story structure i found myself running around between all the dispersed notes to grab bits here and there to put them in the structure but then i can easily lose track of which elements i already used or not so now there is also a need for a separate reference sheet where every single plot point scene idea or dialogue have to be listed from which i can copy them over into the structure while crossing them out on the centralized list

working out the climax for the entire story as part of building the story structure led me back to fleshing out character because i realized that for the resolution to work every character has to reach a certain point of development

i originally had very little in mind for kaufmo beyond fulfilling certain narrative functions but now that all characters are integral to the finale it means i have to really give him a bigger presence and breathing room

he will likely still remain the least developed character of the entire cast but he is definitely getting a big upgrade from what he was at the onset of this

it is stuff like this that i really enjoy about creative writing when certain things either naturally work themselves out into something meaningful or when the goals you set force improvement in areas that you initially overlook the holistic nature of it all coming to the surface

originally i stated that i will likely be able to resume writing the actual story around the time the tadc finale comes out on june nineteenth and i thought i was being generous

but now i am not entirely certain about this it is hard to tell because as i said every time i hit a roadblock on one front i can switch to a different one and that makes it feel like work is progressing steadily and efficiently however in the course of this i keep adding new ideas and elements or else new reference sheets

so i am now not so sure about when i will resume writing the actual story not to mention that there are now a few edits i need to make to what i already wrote

so i think i am going to hold off on promising any dates here

wish i could share more than just the development process but since i am approaching this like a traditional story doing nearly anything of the sort would count as spoilers had i any artistic talent i could at least draw something like the character redesigns or a vague scene or a nominal cover

but i am not giving up any spoilers so this and my basic photoshop designs will have to suffice my apologies

post scriptum was never a big fan of the greatest showman songs but for some reason started obsessively listening to the greatest show cover by peyton parrish and i heard other covers before which left no impression on me

sometimes it is literally just about finding the specific performance that hits you different and you are immediately hooked

also came across this tadc animation set to the original rendition of the same song really enjoyed it

[thecringelathotep]

my spoiler-free story of spoiling myself on episode 9 spoilers

THIS POST DOES NOT CONTAIN SPOILERS

instead i wanted to share with you why i chose to watch the leak

because here is a fun fact for you as a consequence of how i use social media it would have been impossible for me to accidentally spoil myself since the only places i get any content pertaining to tadc are youtube and tumblr

ironically enough what peaked my curiosity and got me to watch the leak were all the posts i have seen on tumblr by people who were spoiled and their reactions to this

one person made a comic with their own take of the ending

another person said they will not work on their tadc comic for a while because of how the spoilers had affected them

i was perfectly content waiting for the youtube release because i was not too enthused about watching the finale in portuguese but these reactions i kept seeing piqued my curiosity

so i did a bit of digging and found the leak

i watched it

and i have thoughts

that i will not be sharing here

i plan to write up a review for the finale and then put it away until after i have watched the official release on youtube in english at that point i will take out the draft for my review and look it once over to see if i feel any different about it and only then will i publish it here

but i will say one thing i am definitely not beating potential allegations about my own tadc au story that is still a work in progress i will make an update post on that soon it was funny seeing in what sense some elements of my story were similar or dissimilar to the canonical ending of the show considering that i came up with most of those elements before even episode eight released

not much of a story i suppose but this is not the end of the post

i do have one piece of advice for tadc fans about watching the finale it has nothing to do with the plot but instead with what episode nine is structurally so i would not count this as a spoiler but i will still hide it below if anyone wants to avoid even that much

click below if you dare

okay here it is

episode nine is not a single episode it is two episodes stuck together or three if you are going to see the finale in cinemas

so the advice is just to adjust your expectation from going to see a coherent one hour long story to two thirty minute long episodes back to back

it is actually blatantly clear where one episode ends and the other begins but you may be so emotionally invested or otherwise preoccupied that you might miss it

why does this matter

because i believe the most common expectation people have right now is that episode nine will be a single episode with a single continuous story delivery that has a whole hour to breathe and develop

but that is not the case at all

episode nine is clearly two episodes that were put together so you should go into it with that expectation because then you will know it is two deliveries rather than one

basically imagine if something like this happened earlier on in the show and episodes four and five released as one episode and were presented to the audience as one episode

fast food masquerade and untitled are very distinct episodes so if you saw them together and were told that this is a single episode you would be confused but since the stakes are not the same in those episodes as for the finale you would just call it a weird decision to merge two episodes like this

i think tadc originally was always planned to be ten episodes long but once a theater release was on the table they decided to combine the last three episodes to make a feature length piece for cinemas and consequently had to release episodes nine and ten together at the same time to match the cinema release so they were combined and presented as episode nine

that is all

see you on june nineteenth with my full finale review

[thecringelathotep]

Ragatha: Jax, you need therapy. Jax: NEED RHYMES WITH CENTIPEDE! [centipedes devour Ragatha from the inside out]

jaxs playground tadc au masterpost

for the record the text above is not from the story it is just a meme based on one of the core themes

so far good progress on the au loreboard

great thing about having so many bases to cover is that once i hit a wall in one area i can switch attention to a different area for a while

i had trouble figuring out a few background details for a couple of characters and could not make any headway

switched attention to fleshing out the psychological profiles of a few characters and hit my stride with them very proud of the work on kingers and queenies profiles and in turn they helped me better formulate the premise on which the entire story hinges

also the entire process of fleshing out the psychological profiles for the characters had been just as fun as figuring out the general backstory because the methodology has been the same keep as much of the original lore intact as possible and use it as anchor and reference points to fill in the gaps with my own interpretations

thus even the psychological profiles became equal parts research and creative writing and the research part remains fascinating because of how much you can create from so little when it comes to characters like queenie and ribbit one might think this obvious but the little information available still serves to both limit and shape what you can do with them and the point is not merely building from what is said about them but the influence they had on the characters who talk about them

example

worked on kingers profile today and the way he talked about queenie with pomni and how he spoke to ragatha in the loser room helped shape a clear boundary of what queenie could be like as a person which in turn also helped flesh out who kinger is as a person because of her influence on him

so his profile immediately helped shape her profile and that fed back into his i believe i have done kinger justice and hopefully he will shine in my story as if he is holding his breath the entire time

working on his profile also ended up helping me develop jaxs profile further but i will not go into details on that

these also help immensely with generating ideas for scenes in the story proper

the image is just me experimenting with bitmap effects

[thecringelathotep]

Jax's Playground AU (WIP) Masterpost

[thecringelathotep]

Jax's Playground AU (WIP) Masterpost

synopsis

Over the years The Amazing Digital Circus has taken a toll on Jax that he would never admit to, but everyone has their limits. Pushed to his breaking point, he lashed out against the warden of his digital prison and supplanted him as the Digital Demigod of a new realm of his own making. His reign of terror persists until the unexpected arrival of a new human, Pomni, who may play the pivotal role in changing the status quo, for better or worse.

overiview

welcome to what will be a proper masterpost for my wip tadc au jaxs playground

i already made an early post explaining the idea for this au and wrote a bit on my writing philosophy and the inspiration behind it in my introduction post

as of right now i barely began writing the actual story because i took a massive detour into figuring out the lore behind it that fits in the empty spaces of tadc show canon

i have made several update posts on this process just because i ended up deeply enjoying it

wip updates

start

writing around canon lore

influence of a single line of dialogue

feels like abstracting

loreboard update

character profiles update

story structure under construction

on note keeping & loredrop one

adding act three & loredrop two

more below along with a big image that is the full version of the image above

about the au

since this is meant to be a masterpost i can go over some of the basics again that were already touched on in the linked posts above

the core of this au is jax gaining full control over the circus and turning it into his own playground and how his trauma and hangups would manifest with near unlimited power

allowing him to act as the villain

a key rule i established at the onset for this story was that i did not want to completely rewrite the tadc canon but instead keep as close to it as possible and only introduce my own ideas into the empty spaces of what has not been revealed to us yet

the one major difference will be that pomni arrives to the circus much later than in the show well after jax takes over so that the reader can learn alongside pomni of the playground and how it came to be

there is also a point of potential difference it is potential because it has not yet been confirmed in the show but so far as i can tell the brain scans theory is likely going to be canon and i already explained how much i detest the brain scans idea it will not ruin the show for me but it will be unfortunate if that is the direction being taken so i have taken a different direction and tailored the backstory to the existence of the circus itself in order to make my idea work within tadc canon

heck i even provided reasoning for why the characters will have different avatars from the ones in the show same concept but different execution if i was any good at drawing i would have had their designs here for you to see

other alterations have been very minimal so far

i conceived this au between episodes seven and eight which prompted me to place the point of divergence from canon into my original story at the end of episode seven because of this i felt it was fine for me to choose what i wanted or did not want to keep from the canon revelations of episode eight flashback scenes in practice i only changed one element

because pomni is not present for the show events i felt it was fine to leave up to my own interpretation some of the things that were made known only through dialogues with pomni nevertheless i tried to alter as little as possible for example i ended up agonizing over one thing said to pomni and chose to adjust my timeline according to the revelation in that line

filling in the gaps of tadc canon with my own ideas rather than freely rewriting it at will has been an interesting challenge as i normally do not write fanfiction so i never had to work with someone elses material

still i do not want to write the story as if the readers are familiar with the source material so instead it will be a traditionally written story where the reader will be introduced to all characters and learn of the backstories i fleshed out for them through dialogues and inner monologues the goal is to write a story that someone entirely unfamiliar with tadc could read and understand everything so the only benefit having seen the show prior to reading this au will be in the ability to parse what is canonical to the show and what is original to my story

this story will lean fairly hard into character study once again i want to keep very close to what we know of the characters thus far from the show canon but fill in the blanks with my interpretation of how they became the way they are moreover because of the gap between jax taking over and pomni arriving there will be another layer of backstory that is entirely my original creation what is interesting about this layer is that while it is something new and original as part of my au it must still adhere to what is in character for the cast as we know them however because of their new experiences in that gap i can introduce some alterations to their psychology that are reflective of those experiences

which is all to say that the cast will all behave very much in character to what we know of them from the show until they do not and at that point i will have a convenient excuse legitimate reason for those changes in their behavior

so what can you expect from this au when i get to writing the story

adventure drama horror comedy action psychological trauma misunderstandings messy human relations from weird to bad to worse to whatever i am hiding at the end your favorite characters in a new environment and with new dynamics original characters and unfamiliarly familiar ones penguins dragons centipedes a sentient cardiovascular system goes to war against the united states  maybe not that one

current progress

i am very close to finishing the background to the background of my au which is to say i am almost done filling in the gaps of the show canon with my own original spin on how that canon came to be i have literally started from when every character was born and worked out a timeline that includes their individual backstories down to what their schooling was like as well as how why and by whom c&a was created and what happened to it from there i worked out when and how people ended up in the circus including the four we never meet but know their avatar portraits my take on the story of the friendship between ribbit kaufmo and jax technology and circus mechanics the alternate events of the show without pomni leading to the divergence from the show in episode seven

once i put the last pieces into place and polish everything i will move onto developing the timeline of the backstory of my au which is to say the events that took place between jax taking over the circus and pomni arriving later this should be a much easier task because i will no longer be constrained by working around the show canon and what i do need to keep in line with will be already worked out in the previous stage

then i will write out the skeleton of the actual story with a timeline of its own and thankfully i had conceived all the most crucial parts of the story early on when inspiration hit me to create this au some connective tissue between those crucial moments still needs growing but i have developed a host of ideas from the first stage

after that i will finally resume actually writing the story fully armed with this host of tools and references

which is not to say it will be a breeze but it will certainly be of great aid as i will be able to focus solely on figuring out the scenes the dialogue and the writing style rather than what those scenes should be and how the dialogue would look between certain characters because i will already have references for their past experiences and psychological profiles in hand

by the time episode nine comes out i will likely just barely begin writing the actual story again

and as things stand i believe i will be locking in all my creative choices and decisions the way they are at present meaning i will not be adapting anything from episode nine into my story the divergence point is already a whole episode back

the beginning

thank you for reading yet another wall of text or else thank you for reading your first wall of text from me or else thank you for reading just this one if you do not plan on coming back

yes i like to ramble

hey what would jax and caine merging look like if we used that one scene from episode eight as reference

here is my take below

[thecringelathotep]

"Ragatha, I'm not saying it's centipedes, but..."

tadc au fanfic concept

progress updates

start

writing around canon lore

influence of a single line of dialogue

feels like abstracting

loreboard update

[thecringelathotep]

It's all coming together

context

cleaned up and rearranged the loreboard as it is so far for the backstory of the backstory to my tadc au fanfic

there are just a few minor elements left to tweak but i am fast approaching the end point of this stage where i have to figure out how to position my lore around the show canon without changing nearly any of it

next stage is figuring out the interim period between the alternate ending of episode seven where my story diverges from the show and the actual starting point of my story

after that i can start planning out the events of the actual story

however both of these should be easier because i will be finally free to just enter purely creative mode

and after all of that is done i can resume writing the actual fic

[thecringelathotep]

are you abstracting

i am not abstracting YOU are abstracting

did not imagine i would lament the need for a second monitor to work on the background information of a fanfic split screen and writing notes on several pieces of paper is not enough

starting to see the appeal of conspiracy boards

i am close to standardizing all information across the several boxes of my lore board

context context 2 the contexting

it started so simple

we know the ages of the characters in twenty seventeen so we know the years when all the characters were born

years are enough well actually now that my backstory scheme is becoming more detailed and granular knowing months is important especially so in the last two years of the circus before my story begins so let us add months no biggie wait no actually now that we have gone into months exact dates became necessary and i need to calculate exactly how much time passed between some dates

so yeah this has run away from me just a little bit

as it stands right now my lore board has

ten individual profiles boxes

five medical info boxes

four boxes for dates structured around specific references

three c&a lore boxes

two massive timeline graphs

one tech box

and all of it is still primarily just for my reference use to help establish the mindset of the characters by the time my story starts and some of the outcomes in how it ends

i will write some flashback scenes to the events i have laid out on this board so there will be some actual creative writing wrung out of this prep work just probably disproportionately small to the amount of work that went into ironing all of this out

but the devil is in the details as is well known the reason i started this at all was because i did not want to come up with dialogue on the fly with some general outline of things that happened before my story began

as a result i started flushing out the backstory but in the format of a detailed timeline and how the events shaped each character and their relations with each other

except in my case flushing out the backstory means working around established lore as i am trying to stick to much of the currently known tadc canon before the divergence point marks the start of my au story

but the results will be worth it i am sure because the way all this work will truly shine through in the story itself

should i ever escape this prep hell and return to writing it again proper

is in the dialogue that will feel grounded in those events that the reader does not necessarily always get to see but will be able to infer a lot about them and each character will have their own perspective and biases of same events

some moments are too interesting not to dedicate entire flashback chapters to and they would make for a great payoff to the tidbits dropped in various lines of dialogue scattered throughout the preceding chapters

i am obviously not treading new ground here these are all well known storytelling methods

but the meticulous work required to pull off these methods while writing around established lore of another author has been a fun and challenging experience

even in more frustrating moments when i had to alter some minor details but with how tightly everything is packed now that inevitably leads to having to change more things around the original alteration

and that in turn sometimes meant making changes to the same info that repeats across several boxes

why does it repeat you ask

because different boxes represent some of the same info in different patterns in order to suit a specific need

my horizontal timeline scale has been instrumental in figuring out how different events for different characters map against each others individual experiences

but i also need those experiences written out in free form in their individual profile boxes so i can refer to their particular perspectives

but there is also an overall timeline box where all events are just listed chronologically because that has its uses as well

but if i have to fix ANOTHER DATE that has a cascading effect on the rest of the timeline AGAIN

i̴̢̯̭̣̺͆̔͐͑ ̸̬̼̞́w̷̧͖̟̺̃͊ĭ̵̼̝l̶͉͖̓͌l̸̨͕̠̈́͛̓̈́ ̵̻̞̤̳͝â̸̖̰̽̿b̶̼̃̿̀̀͂ş̶̟̤̙̈̀̊́͘t̴̹̫̂͑̇͜r̴̂́̽̑͆͜a̴͖̟͖͍͋̀̓ċ̸̠͕͙͠t̸͓͍̪̦̪́ ̷̲̤̳͒̃̒̈́ͅa̷̹̬̻̿̓n̵̚͜d̵̡̧̜̆̊̐͌͌͜ͅ ̸̨͚͎̖͍̏̉͛̏̽b̷̖̏͌̕̕e̴̝͍͠c̶̛̪̱̅̒ö̴͚̟̖͇̫́̀̊m̷̩̼̯̫̍̃̃ḙ̶̬̈͜ ̴̪̪̈́̄̍̌͠a̶̩͠ ̸̢̥͖͎͈̀m̶̨̻̋͠͝ͅḗ̶̦̦͖̝̼ṁ̸͚̓̅̒͘ẹ̴͆ṭ̴̿̏î̶͕̭̱̫͆͛̇̈c̵̺̲͚̥̐̅ ̷̱͍͑͊̌̀ç̴͈̬̲͋ͅo̸̢͎̯̠̞͛̋̆g̴̺̲̹̎n̷̫̮̞̙͑̆̾͠ĭ̶̛̛͇̀͐t̶̢̞͔̠͛o̷̢̮̭̊̎h̴̥̠̉̀̕͜a̷̳̠͚͈̔̅̐ͅz̷̖̹̣͕̘͂͐͘̚ā̸̫̂r̶͕̖̋̀̉̏͝d̷̡̜͚̮̒ ̷̨̮͉́̋͑̈́

[thecringelathotep]

"weeks of rage and anguish"

working around established lore is fun though if you forget a detail as small as a single line of dialogue that can throw a wrench in the works

for me the line was weeks of rage and anguish

i totally forgot jax said this to pomni in the guns episode meaning that weeks had passed in total between the pilot and the guns episode

when i worked on the timeline of events i did not account for WEEKS working instead a much tighter timeline working backwards from the nominal date i chose for when the fake escape episode takes place well i say nominal but i decided on doing the actual release date of the episode just for fun december twenty fifth but in the year the show takes place twenty seventeen

but with that comment it suddenly became apparent that multiple days had to pass between spudsys and the suggestion box as well as between the suggestion box and the guns adventure

thankfully this was just a small wrench and it was an easy fix because there is actually breathing room available going backwards so i could afford to place the pilot earlier in the timeline

i will only need to revise zoobles timeline or else rewrite a bit of their backstory before they join the circus

why am i posting about this

dunno

but i am having fun

though there is an interesting tidbit to consider here regarding authorial intent in the realm of fanfiction writing specifically

namely how far a fanfic author will deviate from the original authors vision

i have established my desire to work very closely to established canon up to the end of episode seven before i embark on telling my own alternative story from that point forward and that i would come up with my own original backstory to fill in the gaps of established lore

this would be like if one artist drew a full image but then removed a big portion of it before making it public and then another artist came in and tried to draw something in the empty space that would still make a coherent image in totality with what the original author did not remove

that actually sounds like a fun challenge then the first artist could showcase their original full version and the two could compare the different results

anyway

in my telling of events this conversation does not even take place because i move pomnis arrival to the circus sometime after episode seven and the start of my own telling of events thereafter so realistically i could choose to ignore this line entirely and just keep my timeline as is

i did choose to ignore ragathas lines from episode eight that indicate she had not been alone when she put on the headset but this wrench is far larger and more problematic for my story to resolve for a host of reasons

not that i am lazy about this kind of thing but it was an executive decision moment

some people choose to tell entirely new stories with the same characters some people choose to pick a spot in the show and tell their own story going forward from there others choose to write stories after everybody escapes the circus with only a few people from this category choosing to explore the backstory of c&a

and some of us choose to sit in front of their conspiracy board style authors notes and move dates around to make the throwaway WEEKS comment still work

thank you for reading this ramble

[thecringelathotep]

Writing around canon lore - my experience

you may want to read this first but you do not have to

i will give you a spoiler here for what this post is about it is my explanation of how i ended up doing insanely detailed research into a number of topics to make my fanfic compliant with the existing tadc lore while also doing my own thing in the empty space of the lore i found this to be a fun exercise in creative writing because i had to work within specific constraints and rules that i established at the onset and refused to break them and this is how far that took me

so i basically made a massive detour from creative writing into research that eventually started looking like a conspiracy board

no no you just do not understand me figuring out the exact university kinger went to is imperative to establishing crucial c&a lore as well as the general location of their building in the real world cross referencing local typography with that of the location in flashes of the real world jax was seeing at the end of episode seven only helped solidify the choice ragathas family farm is just west of my chosen location because there is actual farmland there do you not see how perfectly it all aligns LOOK AT THE BIG BOARD

how did this even start

well

fair bit of warning by the way

this is a long wall of text

but there is a neat image at the very end of it check it out first maybe it will motivate you to read the full text

so there i was writing a tadc au fanfic when i got to the first dialogue scene that relied on events that happened prior to the start of my story and i suddenly realize that to write good dialogue i need to first establish character psychology

i start making profiles for each character and what their relationships with each other are but then i realize that to do this correctly i would need to flush out the actual events that built those relations more

my story has one major alteration to the canon of the events as they unfold in the show which is that pomni shows up much later most events go roughly the same as they did in the show and the big break comes at the end of episode seven after which the background of my story begins

so i have added an extra layer of background

the show has the events in the circus prior to pomnis arrival in the pilot and the events that happen before the creation of caine meanwhile my story adds events that take place after the alternate events of episode seven and prior to pomnis arrival which is when the fanfic itself begins

while the layer of events i add are purely creative writing it is still rooted in character behavior and lore that has been established and i wanted to maintain canon as it has been revealed to us in the show up to episode seven

however after episode eight came out i did add more of the lore that was revealed save for elements that would immediately contradict what i have already started building by that point since i started writing and planning this fic before episode eight came out

as a result i had established a good deal of solid anchors that i decided not to alter but instead work with these would be the framework that set the boundaries i would need to work in and write whatever i want so long as it made sense with those anchors in mind

and i must say that i am happy with the progress i have made on that front because many things just happily fell into place almost all on their own

bob ross would be proud

consider this example

we know how old zooble and jax are and that zooble is half a year older than jax we know the show takes place in twenty seventeen thus we know that both zooble and jax were born in nineteen ninety five but we also know zooble worked as a bartender briefly which is only possible after turning twenty one and she also had a couple of years experience working as a tattoo artist put all this info together and you get an narrow time window for when zooble would have entered the circus as well as a narrow time window for her birthday especially considering that she has to be half a year older than jax which further narrows the options gooseworx could have been lying about their ages of course but it can work within the canonical timeline of events in the show

all of this helped me establish a timeline for zoobles life before entering the circus though it was the most difficult to figure out because of so many parts which feels fitting considering the avatar gimmick

the biggest and most interesting puzzle piece to work with was c&a and the key thing i focused on initially for this piece was to answer a question that i had in mind for a while

how could this building stand abandoned for over a decade but remain fully furbished with no clear signs of vandalism and have electricity to power the singular computer and headset that pomni would find in twenty seventeen

since we do not get too much lore on c&a besides them developing creative ai there was much more room for creative writing and me coming up with my own story for the inception of c&a and its fate but that still did not mean i had absolute freedom to write what i like

before episode eight i considered that the way ragatha would discover the headset would be in her capacity as a real estate agent who had come to the c&a building to assess its value we now know she was not alone when she put on the headset but by the time eight came out i already locked in too much stuff to alter this frankly i did not want to alter it anyway because everything else i had come up with fit too neatly into place to just throw away

i had worked out how c&a got started the exact type of brain tumor scratch has come up with an original character to help ground other elements around this tied certain developments to real life events that would have had impact on c&a

and this has been fun

there was another major factor in my mind so far it is feeling more and more like the mind scan theory will be the canonical outcome of the show that all this time we have been following digital mind copies of people

i will not mince words

i hate the mind scan idea i hated it in soma i hate it now i will take the show never giving us answers over it being mind scans not that this will ruin the show for me but it will be a let down so this will not be the case in my story that is not even a spoiler because i will make this clear very early on but this does create challenges

what i liked about episode seven is that it acted as a rugpull at the expense of theory crafter fans who imagined c&a to be the classic cartoony evil corporation running unethical experiments with super advanced technology and that to me never rang true i was skeptical of that narrative off the bat in that episode because despite the circus itself being a wacky place all the characters felt very grounded and real so i immediately had the sense that the world outside the circus was very much like our own

and this is where the different approach to the suspension of disbelief about technology comes in

the scan theory would make the story of c&a more grounded than the evil corporation keeping people in pods theory if it were not for the fact that i am expected to believe it is possible to house some TWO HUNDRED PETABYTES worth of brain scans on a nineties computer

considering that in total there are at least eighteen people stuck in the circus overall both abstracted and not

now there are two ways to suspend disbelief either we are just asked to blindly accept something at face value and we do it because otherwise we would not have a story at all or else we are given enough of an explanation to where we can ease ourselves into accepting the premise

tadc already does the first by asking us to accept that an advanced ai like caine could be created on a setup like this but we do it because otherwise there is no story

the scans would be a second time that tadc would ask us to suspend disbelief blindly and honestly it is not a bad thing in of itself to make this ask twice or even thrice if the story is good enough

my contention with the scans stems from other reasons ranging from philosophical to literary for the latter it is as simple as this

brain scans are worse than the it was all a dream trope

because at least the actual person can learn from their dream while whatever the scans learn cannot be meaningfully applied to anything because they exist in a stagnant place without true outcomes after having learned the lesson

every happily ever after ending implies that the heroes who had gone through their journey would live long happy lives by successfully applying the lessons they learned to whatever challenges they may face after the conclusion of the story we do not need to know what comes after because we can trust them to overcome it

none of this is applicable to scans stuck in a simulation because it is an extremely limited existence that is very tiny in scope and once they learned their lessons there is simply nothing else left for them to apply their lessons to

unless they unlearn their lessons and have to relearn them of course

which is not a satisfying thought

they cannot meet new people and new challenges and help others there is literally nowhere to apply what they have learned which does not result in a mundane life but a stagnant one

you may disagree but that is why i find the brain scans deeply unsatisfying and which is why i am decidedly against them

but as i said this results in a different challenge for what i want to do

if not brain scans then real people hooked up to a simulation which means life sustaining technology that has to operate for years which brings me in dangerously close range of that evil corporation trope i mentioned above and i do not want to do that either

so that created new anchor points or new rules or constraints around which i would have to navigate my story and the background for c&a in particular

and i had to rely on the second method for suspending disbelief in order to clearly separate my idea from the evil corporation keeping people in pods trope which is to say i had to think this through in great detail to give enough of an explanation for how any of this is possible so that the reader could feel like i have done enough to placate their disbelief

of course we will know for certain how successful i was if i ever finish writing this thing and publish it

but working out all of these background details got me more motivated and fired up if i am being honest it just feels like too much good work to let go to waste and a good chunk of it is mostly just for my own reference so i know how to write the character interactions and an occasional lore crumbs sprinkled here and there between few instances of significant lore dumps

do you wanna see the conspiracy board

so that is where i am at with this au currently

detailing an intricate conspiracy board for the background of events before the circus and during the circus but before the events of the show and after the events of the show but before the start of my story

thank you for bothering to read all of this if you did bother and not just skipped here for the image without reading

by the way i already wrote a small tadc fanfic and you can read about it here

[thecringelathotep]

get inspired start writing tadc au fanfic realize i need background info to reference want to keep close to established tadc lore end up creating a conspiracy board everything from c&a history and office location to what universities the characters had gone to someone sees my board watcha got there some research for my fanfic

i will make an indepth post on the rabbit hole i unexpectedly dove into and how fun it was trying to come up with all this lore while adhering to the established tadc canon later here it is

[thecringelathotep]

Jax's Playground // TADC_WIP_AU

if you are new to my weird little blog then you might want to read this first but you can also read it after its whatever

JP (TADC) - work_in_progress/may_scrap /details: *prologue_3_parts - complete *arc 1 - in_progress *arc 2 - no_data *epilogue_3_parts - no_data

welcome

as i said in my introduction post i never imagined myself writing fanfiction and yet here i am to reiterate the basics from my introduction post linked above i was struck with a powerful bout of inspiration that led me to developing an entire amazing digital circus au in my mind and i have decided to pursue that inspiration high for as long as it lasts and as far as it takes me

this post will serve as a basic introduction to the alternative universe i have in mind and its current status as well as some of my considerations and concerns about working on this project and how to go about publishing it online

let us start at the start which is the basic premise of this au

Over the years The Amazing Digital Circus has taken a toll on Jax that he would never admit to, but everyone has their limits. Pushed to his breaking point, he lashed out against the warden of his digital prison and supplanted him as the Digital Demigod of a new realm of his own making. His reign of terror persists until the unexpected arrival of a new human, Pomni, who may play the pivotal role in changing the status quo, for better or worse.

if you are interested please consider reading further

for the record i came up with this synopsis literally just now for this post so its somewhat haphazard though perfectly accurate

to unpack this without spoiling anything crucial i wanted to introduce exactly two core changes to the tadc lore the first being that pomni shows up much later in this somewhat altered timeline while the second is to have jax absorb caine and his powers

i had come up with most of the crucial aspects for this au during the wait for episode eight and had worked with the idea that a good deal of events remain unchanged up to episode seven but without pomni

my motivation was to explore jaxs character in different conditions a deeply flawed character like him with godlike powers presented many interesting ideas and placing pomni in the middle of this new dynamic allowed for a brand new story to be told

the basic concept is of course nothing new and you may recognize it from other stories like the twilight zone episode its a good life or in characters like kevin mactaggert aka proteus from xmen comics though i am personally specifically referencing his portrayal in nineties animated series kids and teenagers with godlike powers

while jax is not a kid or a teenager he has gone through enough trauma and developed coping skills that would not manifest in anything good if combined with caines abilities not to mention other details that would count as spoilers

i will just add this michael kovach said that jax wishes he was a villain i wanted to give him the tools and freedom to really play at being the villain

moving on since i flushed out a good deal of this au before episode eight there are some things that diverge from the newly revealed elements of the canon and some things that turned out to overlap really well to the point where maybe people will not believe me that i had them planned out before episode eight dropped

however i also made several conscious choices to diverge from the canon in order to make my particular narrative work including the technology behind the circus it is an interesting balancing act that i actually enjoy and it poses various questions about the different creative choices made by the author of the original ip and the fanfiction author namely i suspect that me and gooseworx have different standards for suspension of disbelief regarding technology and in some ways the original tadc approach is arguably more sensible than mine but in other ways i feel the situation is reversed

those musings aside i want to shift to a different question which is publication

i know most people either publish their fanfics as they write them chapter by chapter while others begin publishing only after having written out a good buffer of several chapters and i am sure some of those authors also have long term overarching plots in mind

while my au already has the bones in place i am apprehensive about publishing it before it is actually written out in full several reasons for this the primary being that i would not like to have an unfinished writing project published as i realize how frustrating it is to be a reader and not see the story you may enjoy be driven to completion however if i run out of inspiration or steam on this particular project i could very well end up abandoning it i already have several projects on the back burner or gathering dust however i must admit that none of them had nearly the same inspiration high behind them as this au

the other reason for my apprehension is that i am not yet sure how much i may end up needing to alter in the early chapters as i write the story while all the major and key scenes are already set in stone there are still certain details up in the air and some connective tissue is still growing for example i introduced what i intended to be purely a comedic element however later i realized that this element would be a driving force to develop the plot in the first arc imagine that who knows how and what may change at which stage of the writing process that will require me to revisit earlier chapters and make alterations to accommodate for these ideas

it is something that will have to ponder for a while however the choice i am facing is between publishing it only after i have completed writing it in full or else starting to publish it after i have a bulk of chapters ready perhaps once i have completed the first arc of the story

speaking of

in my personal writing philosophy i firmly believe that a story must be allowed to tell itself for as long or short as is necessary so i do not believe in a set number of chapters or words per chapter or anything like that instead i focus on what makes sense narratively so you may notice that in my planned out structure provided at the start of this post i have a prologue in three parts a prologue should be one single piece some will argue but in my mind a specific series of events all counted as the prologue but could not be housed in the same segment together as the events take place in three distinct settings in terms of narrative and not just location arguably only prologue one counts as the prologue and the following two segments should count as chapters one and two however i also already have plans for the epilogue and that for certain has to be divided into at least three parts and separated out from the main body of the story so i think there is a nice mirror element to having both prologue and epilogue consist of three parts

meanwhile the actual main body of the story is ironically made up of only two arcs rather than three because i do not feel that the story i want to tell requires three arcs and i cannot logically separate the story out into three segments the first arc will serve to introduce readers to this new world and the conflict ahead while the second arc will be where the conflict really takes off

but that is about everything i am comfortable sharing without revealing too much

there are still many considerations and planning that will go into this project but at the same time some things will only reveal themselves as you are writing them so i have already completed the prologue and began work on the first chapter i did have to take a break from working on this au after watching episode eight but i plan to resume writing in the near future but i never stopped working on planning out other elements of the story

hope you found any of this remotely interesting or curious

you can find the link to a different tadc story that i wrote and published in my insight post about it

[thecringelathotep]

pondering music